CPAs: You Can Build Your Business

Small business ownership requires risk tolerance, a strong commitment and specific skills not only to serve customers but to operate the business itself. Becoming an entrepreneur is not for everyone. Still, remote work has taken an axe to startup costs and digital tools pool resources to incubate new businesses. 

According to a study from Intuit’s Quickbooks, 28.2% of Americans had some form of self-employment in 2019. These three CPAs are proud to be part of that number.

Embracing Your Network

Jill T. Foley, CPA’s first hands-on accounting experience was working with nonprofits in audit and tax at a local CPA firm. It had long hours that have come to be expected in public accounting. She knew she wanted to continue working with nonprofits but not quite like this. 

After a lot of thought, she gave her employer her three months’ notice to leave her role, with those three months to get her business off the ground. 

Her network was an asset to connect with clients, business partners and other entrepreneurs who had been through these challenges before. Her aunt and uncle, who are also entrepreneurs, became her mentors and cheerleaders as she built her own venture and tested strategies.  

“It can feel overwhelming or lonely when you’re on this endeavor,” Foley recalls. “To have someone to ask questions to, vent to or get a different perspective from was paramount. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

Early on, she hired a Phoenix branding and marketing company, called Javelina, to build her business’s brand, values and mission. Foley remembered her time working on audits, where she saw the infrastructure many nonprofits lack for quality reporting. Using research and her own experience as a guide, Four Leaf Financial & Accounting, PLLC, emerged as an organization that prioritizes client relationships and timely, quality work.

“As a new entrepreneur, it is difficult to spend your hard-earned money on things that might not seem necessary,” Foley explains. “However, the branding has paid in spades for us. That was instrumental in identifying who we were, where I wanted to go with the firm and the people I wanted to work with internally, as well as clients.”

Foley used the values as a guide to answer any questions that came next. When Foley brought on her first part-time employee, a former colleague who was growing her family, these values guided what mattered internally: offering flexible, remote work and striving for no more than a 40-hour work week. 

“I wanted to allow individuals to have more balance: to be able to further their career and also take care of life,” she says. “It’s really valuable to know that you can take an afternoon off for appointments or spend time with a sick family member or friend.”

Now five years into business ownership, Four Leaf Financial & Accounting is still going strong. Foley never imagined that her team would grow to be what it is today, or that her business would consist almost entirely of referrals. 

“The most challenging thing is deciding to do it,” she says. “It is a frightening thing to know that it all comes down to you, and at the same time, it is the most exhilarating thing to know that this business is yours.”

Finding Opportunities

After welcoming her second child, Gabrielle M. Luoma, CPA, was at a crossroads. She had worked at a mid-sized firm and in industry during her career, but now she wanted to work remotely. Positions like that were rare, so she decided to create that role for herself. 

Aiming to support small businesses and their finances, Luoma researched how to fill the gap in the market with a small business of her own. 

“I had a craft: doing audit and tax work,” she remembers. “I knew how to support small business owners, but I did not truly know how to run a business. A lot of my clients didn’t even know it, but they mentored me quite a bit.”

Her clients asked all the right questions, and it encouraged her to dig deeper. In one instance, she was asked “How many clients do you want to work with?” It was a metric she hadn’t considered before, but it was valuable to meeting her organization’s revenue goals. 

In the late 2000s, digital marketing was a pillar of Luoma’s growth strategy. It was the time when Apple launched its first iPhone, Facebook expanded to the public and Netflix had recently begun streaming digital content. Today, the world of internet analytics and algorithms is much different, but getting your business in front of your ideal customers is still essential. Though most of her clients come from referrals now, Luoma’s early investment in digital marketing was a low-cost and low-barrier action that had an impact. 

“I was probably one of the first people in the Tucson area, as far as CPAs go, to embrace digital marketing,” she recalls. “I had my clients back then saying, ‘I see you everywhere.’ And, I was everywhere because of digital marketing.”

Over the past decade and a half, Luoma has developed as a small business owner. As she began taking on more clients, saying “no” became just as important as saying “yes” to opportunities. When she hired her first employee, the necessary soft skills, such as leadership and social intelligence, became even more significant.  

Today, Luoma serves clients as CEO and founder at MOD Ventures, an outsourced accounting and advisory firm for small business owners. 

To new entrepreneurs, she encourages them to invest in experts — monetarily in a business coach or interpersonally with a mentor — to help flatten the learning curves. Her background lent itself to managing finances and maintaining industry relationships, but entrepreneurship was a new skillset. 

“As CPAs, we think that we should have all the answers, because we’ve gone through rigorous training,” she explains. “We have all of this education. Numbers are great, but that didn't really translate to how to be a business owner for me originally. There are a lot of skillsets that entrepreneurs have to have.”

Making A Plan

During the summer in high school, Yesenia Barraza Simmons, CPA, worked for a deli that happened to be owned by a small business owner and CPA. 

“I knew that I had that entrepreneurial spirit, but I couldn’t define it,” she recalls. “I don’t want to be an employee. I want to be a business owner to help other business owners in a more direct way.”

Simmons became the first in her family to graduate high school and attend college. Through accounting courses and one chance entrepreneurship elective, she developed fundamental business skills and began her first job. She soon realized that she preferred smaller firms and became an independent contractor. During that time, she got to know the challenges and processes of small business ownership.  

Was she ready to build her own firm? She assigned a number to the decision based on the risks, mitigation strategies and her strong services. She saw the possibilities: the freedom of self-employment, the ability to craft quality service and the new ways to be challenged. The answer was yes. 

She set tangible goals and next steps on a monthly, weekly and even daily basis. At first, the big goals were understanding the salary she wanted to make and attaining the number of clients to earn it. Later, she set goals on finding her own office space and hiring her first employee. 

“If I could go back, I would have hired more staff earlier,” she says. “It would have freed me up to have more to do with business development.”

Attracting clients has been organic, though over 50% of their new callers come from online search engines. With the influx of interested parties, Simmons carefully parses through requests to ensure both the potential client and her business can best serve each other.  

“Now, I understand that client contact and communication is one of the biggest aspects of servicing clients,” she explains. “I’ve determined the parameters I need to meet to successfully serve the client and for it to be a successful relationship. I'm clear on setting those expectations in the beginning.”

During client onboarding, they review the business’s values and communication style. That transparency continues as they get to work, and the firm sets considerations on how long certain processes take. 

Simmons enjoys meeting with clients to walk through complicated financial matters in a way they understand. These one-on-ones allow her to see the impact of her work, and for her clients to give feedback and ask questions. 

“I love helping business owners change their mindset and their life through strategies that bring them peace of mind,” she says. “I wish I could have unlimited time and resources to help people.”

As principal at YB Company LLC, Simmons is still committed to supporting small and medium-sized businesses achieve their entrepreneurial and business goals. 

“My parents taught me the values of integrity, honesty, respect, kindness and a strong work ethic,” she says. “Those are CPA skills, and those skills were in me. They served me well to have a successful, sustainable business that I can grow.”

Written for the Arizona Society of CPAs’ magazine, AZ CPA. This July/August 2022 cover story’s goal was to share the opportunities of entrepreneurship with CPAs and has been repurposed to target students with a goal of small business ownership.